Covered in Glitter and Screaming

My illustration pen pal loaned me another Griffin and Sabine book , and I returned it wrapped in multiple layers of tissue paper so that opening each layer was like digging through the layers of the earth. Outer wrapper (shovel, address, and postage) Organic layer (grass) Topsoil Subsoil Reference -> sketch -> final The book was cleverly hidden under the fossil layer of tissue paper

 My Griffin and Sabine pen pal sent me the first book to read, and this is the box I made to return it. The box design went through several rounds of changes and it didn't end up perfect, but overall I am very happy with it This is the first time I've used a magnetic switch – the light only turns on when the lid is opened. Concept sketch First try Second try Third try, bottom half Third try, top half Pencil drawing References are helpful! Gel pen and marker on black paper looks GOOD Attaching the LED to the battery and switch There is a magnet in the bottom front edge of the box; when the switch at the top center gets close to it, the light turns off Ready! Finishing touches added

Out of the blue, I got a postcard in the mail from a friend. One side was a beautiful landscape he created with pen and watercolor, the message on the back described a book called Griffin and Sabine , a lavishly illustrated and interactive book about correspondence between two artists, and he invited me to respond in kind. I couldn't possibly say no! I wanted to respond with a Japan-inspired illustration. Painting isn't my medium, but I liked how the flowers turned out on the  deck of cards , so after some thought I landed on digitally tracing and painting a famous  torii gate  and added an  Amabie .  Not my best work, but doing it is how I get better Design process:

To celebrate Husband's birthday this year, I made a card, a booze tower, and whisky caramel cupcakes. Card Keeping with a black/white/red motif, I designed the words Happy Birthday into the outline of a tumbler with red card stock whisky and tracing paper ice cubes. When the card is closed it appears full, when the card is open it appears empty. Tower I probably looked like a madwoman in the store, picking up bottles to compare the heights and arranging them in my shopping basket to see how they looked next to each other. The bottom layer is the bulkier bottles, with foam and cardboard spacers to make most of them the same height. lower layer practice arrangement most of the bottles were different heights luckily I had a lot of foam, cardboard, and duct tape on hand approved arrangement Final version with ribbons and bows Cupcakes I am by no means a baker, but I made these whisky caramel cupcakes and they actually turned out fine! Surprised the heck out of me. So much dairy, thoug...

I found tutorial videos for this card and a square envelope and made my own.  For the design, I started with the words "Live Laugh Love" and kept going with other words that begin with L. Design I did some math so that the folded shapes would be the right size to be mailed with regular postage within the US and rounded down so each segment was easy to measure, then made a template in Illustrator. The top shape is the card, the bottom shape is the envelope. Magenta lines are for cuts, cyan lines are for folds. I traced each facet between the fold lines to get shapes I can cut from bright paper and glue to the white base In Cricut Design Space I added the text to these panels (it will only allow me to use a limited number of fonts as fonts instead of outlined shapes, which is a constant irritant to me as a designer) Production All-white prototype with rough word panel placement (also where I discovered that I forgot to create word shapes for two panels so I had to go back and...

In 2020, Amabie  started to trend on Japanese Twitter. Amabie is a Japanese yokai that was fairly obscure until last year. There are variations to the story, but essentially a mermaid-like creature with long hair, a beak, scales, and three legs or fins emerged from the sea in the late 1800s to give a warning and advice. It predicted six years of good harvest and then a pandemic, but to stave off the disease, Amabie said to draw its picture and show that picture to as many people as possible. So artists took to the interwebs with #AmabieChallenge and there are tons of interesting drawings, sculptures, and whimsical lunches in the shape of Amabie.  This is my version: And here's the design process video: If you want to learn more, there are a number of articles from the  Asahi Shimbun ,  NHK , the  Japan Times , and Western networks like the  Guardian ,  BBC , and  NPR . To see other artist interpretations, check out Twitter, Instagram, Pinteres...